Ancient stone inscriptions with Village/City names.

[R. N. iyengar]

Friends,

 I am looking for information on ‘sign posts or name stones’ that were inscribed with the local village or city name in Brahmi, Karoshthi, Sharada,Tamil, Telugu, Kannada or any other known ancient script. For the town of Dholavira  there is a plaque at the northern gate which looks like a name board, but the script (Indus) has not been deciphered.

Available literature hints at the existence of such artifacts but I am searching for hard physical evidence. As is known there are ancient inscriptions on stone and copper plates in thousands that mention charity deeds and names of  agraharas, settlements and  towns. But I am looking for isolated stand alone stones with names or numbers !  To make the query still more pointed, is there evidence for names Pataliputra/Kusumapura, Takshashila, Ayodhya, Avanti, Ujjayini,  Dvaraka, Amaravati, Kanchi, Banavasi, Sthaneshwar, ... (or any other place)  being shown in relief at the gateways or nearby locations.  I would be grateful for information on primary references, even if they are in Indian or foreign museums, or just as estampage.

with regards

RN Iyengar

[Taff Rivers]

RN Iyengar,


What kind of 'numbers' are you interested in? Distances, populations?, most would appear to relate to dreaded taxation. As to epigraphy of place names, things have been narrowed down for you to only 100,000 or so.

  "An estimated 100,000 inscriptions have now (in 2014) been found, and many of these have been cataloged and translated."

  http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Indian_inscriptions

Hope this helps,

   Taff

[Arvind_Kolhatkar]

As mentioned in my earlier posting ''The First 'Written' Zero in the World" of March 15, I had recently visited the Angkor Wat and surrounding Hindu archaeological sites in Cambodia.  During that visit I also visited the National Museum in Phnom Penh.

I took several photographs of objects and sculptures in stone in the Museum.  One of them was labelled as  a 'Brahmanic Marker', which I attach herewith.  No explanation is available as to what this stone marker marks but it could be a stone to mark the boundary of a city.  Most of the surface of the marker has several figures carved on it in neat rows.  These could be the guardian gods or spirits or ancestors.  The top has a representation of Vishnu, recumbent upon the serpent Ananta, with Laxmi pressing his legs and a lotus with Brahmadeva in it rising out of his navel.

(This recumbent vishnu is a popular theme in those temples and are seen everywhere.  I attach a photograph of showing a similar image from 'the river of a thousand lingas' about 35 km to the north of the town of Siem Reap, the hub for Angkor Wat ruins.  Another popular theme is the 'Samudramanthana'.  The Angkor Wat temple has huge panels depicting this scene.  Bridges built over moats that surround temples have balustrades on both sides showings gods and demons holding the snake in their hands.  I show a couple of pictures of such balustrades. The heads of the figures have been vandalized long ago by trophy seekers.)